Mahler Foundation

Boisterous timpani joined by blazing brass set the scene for the riotous fifth movement. The long, arduous first movement, after three shorter movements developmental in mood, is finally equalled by a substantial ‘daylight’ finale. The movement is a rondo combined with a set of eight variations, capped off by a dramatic coda. There are parodies of Richard Wagner (1813-1883) – Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Franz Lehar (1870-1948) – The Merry Widow.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 7 - 5th Movement with Lew Smoley.

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 was written in Year 1904 and Year 1905, with repeated revisions to the scoring. Although the symphony is often described as being in the key of E minor, its tonal scheme is more complicated. The symphony’s Movement 1: Langsam (Adagio) – Allegro risoluto, ma non troppo moves from B minor (introduction) to E minor. The work ends with Movement 5: Rondo-Finale in C Major.

This symphony concludes the trio of Mahlers ‘middle’ instrumental symphonies (No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7).

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 7 - Intro with Lew Smoley.

Symphony No. 9 by Gustav Mahler was written between 1908 and 1909, and was the last symphony he completed. Though the work is often described as being in the key of D major, the tonal scheme of the symphony as a whole is progressive. While the opening movement is in D major, the finale is in D-flat major.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 9 - Intro with Lew Smoley.

Based on the poem Todtenfeier by Adam Mickiewicz.

With deeply serious and solemn expression. With this funeral march and the eloquence of its thematic material, the power of its architectural structures, the emotional thrust of its inspiration and its concision of thought, Mahler assumes for the first time the full stature of a symphonist in the great German tradition. The shadow of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) hovers over the opening bars with a long tremolando and a first subject on the lower strings that is 43 bars long. Yet the composer’s distinctive voice asserts itself in such features as the dominant-tonic melodic intervals and the alternation between major and minor.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 2 - 1st Movement with Lew Smoley.

Of the great finale, Bruno Walter wrote, “In the last movement, words are stilled—for what language can utter heavenly love more powerfully and forcefully than music itself? The Adagio, with its broad, solemn melodic line, is, as a whole—and despite passages of burning pain—eloquent of comfort and grace. It is a single sound of heartfelt and exalted feelings, in which the whole giant structure finds its culmination.

The movement begins very softly with a broad D-major chorale melody, which slowly builds to a loud and majestic conclusion culminating on repeated D major chords with bold statements on the timpani.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 3 - 6th Movement with Lew Smoley.

Very slowly, mysteriously. A minor. “Midnight song”.

At this point, in the sparsely instrumentated fourth movement, we hear an alto solo singing a setting of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Midnight Song” from Also sprach Zarathustra “O Mensch! Gib acht!” (“O man! Take heed!”), with thematic material from the first movement woven into it.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 3 - 4th Movement with Lew Smoley.

The Symphony No. 4 in G major by Gustav Mahler was written in 1899 and 1900, though it incorporates a song originally written in 1892. The song, “Das himmlische Leben”, presents a child’s vision of Heaven. It is sung by a soprano in the work’s fourth and last movement. Although typically described as being in the key of G major, the symphony employs a progressive tonal scheme (‘(b)/G–E’).

Mahler’s first four symphonies are often referred to as the “Wunderhorn” symphonies because many of their themes originate in earlier songs by Mahler on texts from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn). The fourth symphony is built around a single song, “Das himmlische Leben”. It is prefigured in various ways in the first three movements and sung in its entirety by a solo soprano in the fourth movement.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 4 - Intro with Lew Smoley.

In the tempo of a minuet. A major.

Mahler dedicated the second movement to “the flowers on the meadow”. In contrast to the violent forces of the first movement, it starts as a graceful Menuet but also features stormier episodes.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 3 - 2nd Movement with Lew Smoley.

The last movement is an extended sonata form, characterized by drastic changes in mood and tempo, the sudden change of glorious soaring melody to deep agony. The movement is punctuated by three hammer blows. Alma quoted her husband as saying that these were three mighty blows of fate befallen by the hero, “the third of which fells him like a tree”.

She identified these blows with three later events in Gustav Mahler’s own life: the death of his eldest daughter Maria Anna Mahler, the diagnosis of an eventually fatal heart condition, and his forced resignation from the Vienna Opera and departure from Vienna. When he revised the work, Mahler removed the last of these three hammer blows so that the music built to a sudden moment of stillness in place of the third blow.

Some modern performances restore the third strike of the hammer. The piece ends with the same rhythmic motif that appeared in the first movement, but the chord above it is a simple A minor triad, rather than A major turning into A minor. After the third ‘hammer blow’ passage, the music gropes in darkness and then the trombones and horns begin to offer consolation. However after they turn briefly to major they fade away and the final bars erupt in minor.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 6 - 4th Movement with Lew Smoley.

There is an undercurrent of night about the spooky third movement; while “Scherzo” means “joke”, this movement is remarkably spooky and even grim. If the first ‘Nachtmusik’ possessed a friendly mood disguised in grotesqueries, this movement is a demon sneering at the listener. This movement is a most morbid and sarcastic mockery of the Viennese waltz.

The movement begins with a strange gesture: a pianissimo dialogue between timpani and pizzicato basses and cellos with sardonic interjections from the winds. After some buildup, the orchestra sets off on a threatening waltz, complete with unearthly woodwind shrieks and ghostly shimmerings from the basses, with a recurring “lamenting” theme in the woodwinds.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 7 - 3rd Movement with Lew Smoley.